


Rhyme

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-15
Updated: 2002-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-01 07:50:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/353985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Children's rhymes and fairy tales often have dark origins. This is the story of one.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhyme

## Rhyme

by Ryu I.

<http://constructedmadness.com>

* * *

Rhyme  
Ryu I. 

There were times when Clark hated children. 

That wasn't something he told people, of course, and it wasn't even a permanent state. There were only flashes of resentment that stirred a sort of jealous hatred in him. On the most obvious level, his animosity was based on distant memories of when he had been a little boy, literally hundreds of years earlier. Clark could still remember sitting on the sidelines during recess while Pete and the other children played Red Rover and dodgeball. He'd always had a note from his parents, explaining that the "loose disc" in his back prohibited him from participating. In the middle of first grade he had learned why he really couldn't play with the other kids-that they were easy to break, and he was more than capable of doing the breaking. Sometimes the memory of wood crunching beneath little-boy body would strike him, hot and cold at once. Yes, there was a reason he hadn't been allowed to play. That was so logical that, really, it wasn't the reason he resented children at all. He just preferred to let himself believe that rather than facing the truth. 

The truth was somewhat more elusive. Sometimes he convinced himself it was their youth or their innocence. Maybe even their fragility-children could be so easily broken, and they would leave mourners in their wake. Then there was their curiosity; the world was new and alive, and they could be surprised by the simplest things. The world was an open book, full of possibilities. 

None of that was true for Clark. After three hundred years of life, there was no such thing as innocence or discovery. Maybe he disliked children sometimes because they had what his seemingly endless lifetime had stolen from them. 

Or maybe he only hated children when they were playing this particular game. 

It was a little like hopscotch, which he had played a couple of times before he he'd lost the ability to toss like a normal child. There was a grid laid out, about two times wider than hopscotch as he remembered it and two and a half times longer. The edges squiggled artistically. One child would jump to one of the roundish playing pieces and motion somehow-a tap to the nose, a wave of the hand-and recite the beginning of the rhyme that was basic to the game. Another jump, and a different move as another hopped behind with the move of the first and a gesture of her own. They would recite the first two lines together. It was a long and complicated game, sort of "Old McDonald" in action, and usually none of the children managed to keep it together long enough to make it through the whole rhyme. Generally, they just ended up in a pile of giggling little bodies. 

~*Little Boy Luthor liked to play~*  
Skip. Turn.  
~*Dancing all his day away.~*  
Skip. Turn. Skip. Bow. 

The first time he had heard it, Clark had been hard put not to just...slap the kid who was mumbling it. That was nearly a hundred years ago-it had taken around 150 years for the incident to transform from media frenzy to historical oddity to an innocent children's rhyme. Maybe it shouldn't have been such a shock. Most nursery rhymes came from violence-Ring Around the Rosie alone was utterly twisted. Children were too innocent to know that it was a story of the Black Death, of fear and cold and panic. They just thought it was fun. 

Clark hadn't been allowed to play that, either. When his sixth-grade teacher told him what it meant, he wasn't sorry that he hadn't. 

Or Lizzie Borden took an ax. Chloe had taught him that one in middle school, and it had made him a little sick to his stomach. The Borden rhyme was painfully obvious and children still sang it. At least this one was more like "Rosie." 

~ _Little Boy Luthor liked to play_ ~  
Skip. Turn.  
~*Dancing all his day away.~*  
Skip. Turn. Skip. Bow.  
~*Daddy lion said no more!~*  
Skip. Turn. Skip. Bow. Skip. Touch.  
~*Time to end just like before!~* 

A flurry of giggles floated to him as two of the children collided and nearly fell outside the board. 

Clark felt his stomach turn and he almost looked around for any telltale green glows. There was some kind of twisted irony in the fact that only the bones of a dead planet and some idiotic children's game could make him feel sick, but he didn't feel like thinking that through just now. 

He shouldn't resent them for not knowing the truth. He shouldn't feel a spark of anger because they were singing about someone he had loved. 

Did love. Damn it. 

Clark stood. He needed to get away from the game before he started to lose himself in the truth of it. 

**Blood. Blood everywhere and a form slender and pale and naked and kneeling in the middle of it like some sort of lamb at the slaughter- __

Clark stood and walked away. 

As always when he saw children skipping and twisting their way through "Little Boy Luthor," Clark's feet seem to walk of their own volition toward the equator. Death after death of his loved ones as he stayed young had destroyed his need for a secret identity, so when his feet left the ground he didn't worry about the fact that he was wearing his civilian clothes. 

When he landed on the island, he tried to ignore the odd sense of relief that always overcame him. The isle had been a gift from the Bruce Wayne Foundation to Clark Kent at the time of Bruce's death; it was small, private and pleasantly tropical. There was only one building. It sprawled along the beach, sleek and high tech. It was the closest thing Clark had to "home." 

That was...pathetic, really, but he didn't think about that, either. 

He slipped through the triple-reinforced doors, designed so that only he could open them, and walked down the hallway. His footsteps echoed off the tastefully decorated halls and coalesced into a rhythm in his head. Totally against his will, he heard it, the chanting voices of children halfway across the world by now. 

~*Little Boy Luthor liked to play  
Dancing all his day away.  
Daddy lion said no more!  
Time to end just like before!  
Lightning flashes down in rows  
An' Little Boy Luthor's lion Goes!~* 

He hated children. Protected them, devoted his life to their future, but hated them. 

The only other occupant of the house was seated in the comfortable living room, feet curled up under him as he read a book he had read dozens of times before. Frankenstein. Clark had burned more than one copy of that cursed text, but he always ended up getting another when his lover asked. 

*~One and two and nine and ten~* 

"Clark!" The voice was as young as Clark's though, amazingly, the body that embodied it was six years older than his. His lover was his only senior on the planet. "I was wondering what you were up to." 

"Sorry, Lex. I got sidetracked. Mudslide in Mexico." 

Lex Luthor smiled at him and scooted down the couch to make room. Clark wasn't the only one cursed with immortality. 

No, he was just the only one sane enough to regret it. 

~*Shot that lion again and again.~* 

Clark settled down and Lex let his feet press against the bigger man's hip. It was such a comfortable, normal scene-two long-time lovers sharing in the silence of the home they had decorated together-that Clark allowed himself to believe, as he always did, that this contact could erase the realities of immortality and morbid children's games. "What've you been up to today?" 

His answer was a graceful shrug. "Reading. Worked on the gardens. What day is it?" 

"Thursday." Clark never gave the year or even the month. Lex never asked. Lex didn't have to know the way Clark did. Time had lost its sway over the last Luthor a long, long time ago. 

Funny Clark thought, not for the first time That I don't hate Lex, too. 

Lex stretched lazily. "I was starting to get bored." 

"You should let me buy you some new books." 

"No!" Sharp, then gentle. "I have lots of books, already." 

"Yeah." 

Lex didn't want to read anything he hadn't read before the day of the incident. If he did, he would have to acknowledge that time had passed since he was twenty-six. Clark understood that, and didn't push. 

He didn't want it to be real, either. 

Lex shifted, crawling on top of him with a devilish look in his eye. "You look tense." 

Clark laughed, and the years melted away. "Mm. Planning on helping me relax?" The sharp nip to his bottom lip revealed Lex's intention to do just that. 

~*Three and four and seven and eight~* 

Clark didn't sleep much. He hadn't needed more than a couple of hours at a time since puberty, so he spent the nighttime hours either patrolling or curled around his sleeping lover. Either was peaceful as a general rule, but sometimes his own mind seemed to roll and cackle and turn against him. Occasionally, his supernatural hearing would catch snatches of the rhyme and float them along his spine. Sometimes, he just though up the words himself. 

It had started as a cruel joke. 

The Inquisitor staff had never been known for subtlety or tact, and so when the biggest story of the century presented itself, they made a joke of it. "Little Boy Luthor Kills Luthor Lion" was their first headline, the day after the incident. They hadn't even had to pad the story out with bonus borderline researched details. Lionel's murder was plenty wild enough on its own. "Infamous Lex Luthor found bathed in father's blood." Who needed more than that for sensationalism? 

But rhen the story had provided more for itself. Unsavory men of every type stepped forward when the tyrant was gone. They told stories of deceit, sex, and murderous intent that didn't really surprise anyone. Everyone knew Lionel Luthor had been a bastard. This just confirmed it. There had always been rumors that he killed his own father for the beginnings of what became the LuthorCorp Empire. Was it so hard to believe he'd try to kill his son? 

Was it so hard to believe his son would kill him first? 

Clark stroked Lex's smooth, naked back. Lex snuggled closer to him with a sleep-filled mumble even Clark couldn't make out. He smelled good, and Clark breathed him in; warmth and musk and sweat and Lex. 

At least he didn't smell like blood. 

He had at first. Certainly, when Clark had found him, rocking in the ruin of his father's office, he had smelled of it, but that was to be expected. The police report claimed Lex had shot his father four times before grabbing the letter opener on the desk. Lex had been shot once, in the shoulder, with the first bullet from the gun. The final bullet had flown wide. It was hard not to smell like blood when you were sitting torn and naked in a sea of it. Rocking. Mumbling. Blind. 

Lionel had wanted Lex out of the way. Lex had always been a disappointment. Too emotional, too young, and too in love with a nobody peasant boy from the middle of nowhere. Clark supposed, at the time, his lover was probably flattered that at least Lionel had intended to kill Lex himself instead of paying someone else to do it. Not exactly the best way to have paternal attention, but Lex had craved it enough that Clark suspected Lex had almost enjoyed it before he'd gone mad. 

**And ripped and torn and screamed. __

Clark wondered what Lionel had said to completely unhinge his son. He wondered if it had anything to do with him. He wouldn't be surprised if it did. 

*~Run back home to the Big Black Gate!~* 

Clark had let the doctors keep Lex locked inside the castle and out of the public eye until his continued youth had become too suspicious. Bruce Wayne had helped him plan the house they lived in now, and helped him move Lex there without arousing any suspicions. Apparently, Kryptonians and bald meteor mutants were immortal. Also apparently, Kryptonians mated for life and bald meteor mutants could conveniently forget killing their fathers in bloodthirsty self defense as long as no one saw them and they saw only their mate. 

The sun rose above the trees and poured through the triple-pane glass that insured no one could break in and Lex couldn't break out, should he ever want to. For a lazy moment, Clark considered staying in bed for the rest of the day, world be damned, with the only person who could match his years and hold his heart. 

Lex chuckled against his chest. "What?" Clark asked. 

"Go on, love." He tilted his head back, sleepy silver-blue eyes settling on Clark's face. "You know you get antsy if you don't save at least a dozen people in a twenty four hour period." Lex looked amused, as he always had at Clark's inborn need to protect the world. 

"Maybe I'd rather stay in bed with you." 

Lex snorted softly. "And watch me sleep? Haven't you done enough of that tonight?" He stretched up and shoved his tongue in Clark's mouth. The kiss was deep and knowing, searching out all the right places without a thought. He pouted a bit when Lex pulled away and stretched. "I need to go over some figures." 

Three hundred years and Lex still did the taxes on the island. He could manage it if the information didn't come with dates. Clark chuckled. Lex rolled his eyes and slipped out of bed, naked. 

**Naked and bleeding and cold and- __

Clark shook the thought away, and replaced it with memories of his first time, of castle walls and hot tongues and little cries in the dark. He grinned and Lex got on to him for having a dirty mind so early in the morning. Clark apologized without meaning a word of it, reminded Lex to eat-"I'm not a baby, Clark"-and took off for his morning rounds as he had more days than he cared to remember. 

He flew over a civilization that was transient at best-three centuries was plenty of time to realize that nothing was permanent save himself and Lex-and kept an eye open for emergencies. He could smell Lex on him, and he smiled. Children were playing in the snow on the Antarctic station and in the forests outside Peru. They rolled in the sand on the coast of Italy. They all knew Superman and waved to him as he flew overhead. Even know, he was the only alien on Earth who could fly so freely. When he slipped out of sight they went back to hopscotch and video games and "let's pretend." 

They went back to "Little Boy Luthor." 

Today, Clark ignored them. Tomorrow, he might have to fight the urge to silence them, somehow. Tonight, he would go home to his mad lover and be content. Twenty years from now, it would be exactly the same. 

Such was life. 

~End~ 

Little Boy Luthor liked to play  
Dancing all his day away  
Daddy lion said no more!  
Time to end just like before!  
Lightning flashes down in rows  
An' Little Boy Luthor's lion Goes! 

One and two and nine and ten  
Shot that lion again and again  
Three and four and seven and eight  
Run back home to the Big Black Gate! 


End file.
